By snoadmin
Imagine students being forced to have a coffeehouse built in their home using their own money without any permission.
Such is the case with residents in the Los Alamitos dormitory, where a Seattle’s Best Coffee shop is currently being built in one half of the building’s first floor common area.
However, some Los Alamitos residents said the Seattle’s Best Coffee shop construction within their turf is only somewhat inconvenient and the shop will be beneficial once completed.
“It’s been loud on a couple of days, not very many of them,” said Catherine Ricohermoso, the Los Alamitos building coordinator and a senior English education major. “But in probably two or three days where they’re doing the drilling, you could totally hear it. And since my apartment is right [next to the construction] I could hear it outside my door.”
“It gets kind of noisy sometimes in the morning when they’re doing some sledgehammer, jackhammer stuff. That’s the only big thing,” said Chazz Spruill, the first floor Los Alamitos resident assistant and junior business finance major.
Spruill said, however, that because the construction has closed off one of the Los Alamitos side doors, he has to walk all the way around to get into the building when he parks in Lot 16.
Sarah Stanton, a freshman fashion merchandising major living in Alamitos on the second floor, who said she hopes to get a job at the coffeehouse with her previous coffee-making experience, also had a complaint similar to Spruill’s but she also expressed optimism about the situation.
“I haven’t heard any noise that has actually bothered me. But it’s kind of annoying not being able to use those doors and walking in from that way…but it’s not that bad. I mean, it’s exercise,” Stanton said.
For Andrew Pauling, a sophomore film major living in Los Alamitos on the first floor, only one small aspect of his daily routine has been altered by the construction.
“It has obstructed my normal route to the dining hall,” he said.
According to Ricohermoso, the construction temporarily cut off the Los Alamitos building water supply last Saturday for half the day. Residents were notified ahead of time of the cutoff.
“West side residents couldn’t use the bathroom on [the west] side or the shower, so it affected us that way,” she said.
“We didn’t get to take a shower until seven at night,” Stanton said, who was staying in her room during the weekend. “It was really annoying. We had to go to the bathroom at Cerritos or the Residence area.”
Stanton also said that residents like her did not have keys to those areas, so they had to use the common area bathrooms, which are mainly used by guests.
Ricohermoso also said the new Seattle’s Best Coffee shop has cut the Los Alamitos first floor common space in half. The big screen TV, vending machines and old furniture, where the Seattle’s Best Coffee will be, have all been moved to the other side of the common area.
“There is less space in the dorms just because now everyone has to study there so that room is usually always full,” Ricohermoso said.
In the end, several of the residents agreed that having coffee shop in Los Alamitos will be beneficial.
“I think what President King was saying with getting more people on campus will probably work,” Spruill said. “I think a lot of people will come on campus and stay on campus, but for R.A.s I don’t think it’s going to be too good because it’s more people to deal with.”
“I know that in the long run, all these things that we have to sacrifice is going to be worth it because it is going to look awesome,” Ricohermoso said.
